The retrial began in April During the nine-week trial in Washington, DC, the jury heard testimony from 46 witnesses including Clemens' former peers on the field, his wife, Debbie Clemens, and his former strength coach and principal accuser, Brian McNamee. Brian McNamee's testimony, which spanned five days, was at the center of the government's case.
He testified that he had injected the former all-star pitcher with performance-enhancing drugs on several occasions. Hardin's cross-examination of McNamee thoroughly and repeatedly discredited the witness, leaving one juror to ask why McNamee should be believed when his story had changed so many times. Attanasio hammered the point home in closing, stating that McNamee was "the only witness ever in the history of the world who says he gave or saw an injection to that man.
You saw how hard the FBI looked for corroboration. Brian McNamee defines reasonable doubt. Another turning point in the trial came during the testimony of Andy Pettitte, a former teammate and friend of Roger Clemens.
During cross-examination by Attanasio, the Yankee pitcher conceded that there was a "" chance he might have misheard what the prosecution had contended was a "confession" by Clemens that he had used human growth hormone. McNamee said that he injected Clemens with HGH multiple times in , , and , and that he saved a needle and other waste from a steroid injection of Clemens and stored it in his house in a Miller Lite can inside a box for more than six years.
The bottom line: If the jury believed McNamee, Clemens was going to be convicted. If the jury believed Clemens, Clemens was going to be found not guilty.
Yes, Clemens was found not guilty on all counts, so this was a perfect game, if perfect games involve sitting through a trial for two months while 12 people decide your fate, spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on legal fees, and having intimate details of your life dissected by the media.
It only means that the government failed to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Roger Clemens lied about not using HGH. Put simply, the defense won because the jury believed Roger Clemens more than they believed Brian McNamee.
Without question, this trial turned out to be as much if not more about McNamee as about Clemens. After their investigation, the government surely knew they had a witness who would single-handedly win or lose them the case, if simply because they had no one else and no other evidence that would come close to proving that Roger Clemens lied about using HGH. The problem for the government, of course, was that McNamee was a complete wild card.
McNamee spent nearly 26 hours on the stand over the course of six days. The government tried to paint him as a sympathetic figure, having him reveal that he is a diabetic who uses an insulin pump, particularly when under stress. At one point, McNamee apologized to the jury for needing to take extra breaks during his testimony and explained that he lost his job, his clients, and his marriage as a result of the Clemens saga.
He claimed that he saved a needle, cotton balls, and other materials from an HGH injection of Clemens in and stored them in a crumpled Miller Lite can inside a FedEx box before turning them over to federal authorities in McNamee explained that he held on to the materials at the suggestion of his now-estranged wife, who feared that he would take the fall for Clemens if his drug use was eventually discovered.
Mitchell contacting him, the investigators for the Mitchell Report reached out to Clemens' agents, but Walton ruled previously that Clemens' knowledge, or lack thereof, about that request fell into the category of attorney-client privilege.
Not only could it not be determined without breaching that privilege whether his agents, via the players' union, actually did tell him Mitchell wanted to talk to him, but the questions about Mitchell asking to talk to him didn't amount to the same thing as Mitchell's investigators asking to talk to him. Before all that, Corso's appearance on the stand became another attempt for the government to back up McNamee, the most crucial witness in their case.
McNamee, the strength-and-conditioning trainer for Clemens for the better part of a decade, testified earlier in the trial that he saved items he used to inject Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs in August , taking them home to show his wife to ease their marital woes over the amount of time he was spending training Clemens.
McNamee says he then stored the items in a beer can and a mailing box in his home before turning them over to authorities in January Corso was called by the government to rebut the defense's cross-examination of McNamee in which it was suggested he was biased against Clemens and had made up his claims when under pressure from federal investigators in Former Major Leaguer David Segui was called last week for similar reasons, testifying he'd had a conversation with McNamee sometime in that McNamee had saved "darts" used on other players in order to placate his wife.
Corso testified that he began to use McNamee's training services in , and that shortly thereafter McNamee mentioned baseball players had used HGH with good results. Clemens as one of the examples," Corso said.
Corso later related a conversation he and McNamee had sometime in -- clarifying later that it was after he'd read in the papers about a trainer named Anderson, which correlates with the time Barry Bonds' trainer Greg Anderson pleaded guilty to steroids distribution.
Corso said that story precipitated another conversation with McNamee. Said Corso: "He said he saved some syringes he threw in a beer can and threw in a FedEx box.
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